Welcome to this week’s edition of top stock highlights where we feature interesting business snippets from earnings announcements and news reports. Bids for Mercatus’ retail portfolio It was just around two months ago when we wrote about Mercatus Co-operative, a unit of NTUC, offering a bunch of its retail properties for sale. The estimated valuation for this portfolio is above S$4 billion. Back then, we speculated that several retail REITs in Singapore may be interested contenders for these assets as they include popular suburban malls such as Jurong Point and a 50% stake in Nex mall. Now, the names of some of the contenders have been revealed, and we were spot on. The reported contenders include CapitaLand Integrated Commercial Trust (SGX: C38U), or CICT, Hong Kong-listed Link REIT (HKSE: 0823), Frasers Centrepoint Trust (SGX: J69U), or FCT, and Lendlease Global Commercial REIT (SGX: JYEU), or LREIT. The size of the portfolio, however, means that the winning bidder should have...